The best way to learn spelling
One reason that
spelling in English can be so difficult is that our words come from so many
different languages with different spelling rules. That’s why spelling bees can
be so competitive.
Spanish schools don’t
have spelling bees. Why bother? Spanish is always written phonetically, so any
native Spanish-speaking child can correctly spell anything they can write.
This is not true of
English.
The best way to learn
to spell better depends on your own learning style.
· If you learn by hearing, spell words out loud, or have someone else do it
for you. Sing the letters. Listen to the rhythm, and you may sense the rules
behind them. Teach someone else.
· If you learn kinesically;
that is, by movement, tracing words on paper or in the air may cement their
correct spelling in your memory. Typing them will help too.
· If you learn by seeing, the more you read, the more your spelling will
improve. Using a keyboard will help. Seeing what you just typed appearing
neatly on the screen may trigger your “right/wrong” sensors more reliably than
trying to read your handwriting.
· If you learn logically,
organize your word lists by rule or family. Not all logic is verbal, and you
can sharpen your unconscious spelling sense simply by putting all the words
together that end with ‘ed’ or start with ‘eu’.
Strategies for better spelling
· It helps to learn basic spelling rules, but don’t worry if you still make mistakes. After
a two year study, Stanford University researchers determined that you would
need more than 650 rules to correctly spell the 20,000 most common words in the
English language. If you learned 300 rules, you might be able to spell half of
them.
· Learn to spell words according to families; that is, in groups of similarly spelled words. In
a spelling bee, to make the competition harder, the judges make sure that every
word is different from the next. But learning to spell is not a competition, so
spelling lists should be as easy to learn as possible – with each word similar
to the next. In a few minutes, a child can learn to spell take, rake, make, lake, bake, cake,
sake, and wake. So when you study patriarch, you may as well learn arch, archive, archaic, architecture,
archipelago, and archaeology at
the same time. Simply seeing arch on
that list might be enough reminder to spell the others correctly. Besides,
getting question after question right makes a student feel good.
· Learn to spell words according to their etymology; that is, according to their language
of origin. Many Arabic words begin with ‘al’ (meaning ‘the’) while
many Hebrew names end with ‘el’ (meaning ‘God’). In words that came from Greek,
the ‘f’ sound is spelled ‘ph’. If you remember those word origins, you will
never spell algebra as “elgebra”, Michael as “Micheal”, or photograph as “fotograf”.
Though some people
may judge you for your mistakes, success in life doesn’t depend on good
spelling.
Fortunately, spellcheckers and friends can help. But when opponents
criticized Andrew Jackson’s spelling, the future U.S. President retorted, “It’s
a… poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
Source: https://dailywritingtips.com
